At The Ashram, We Walk Barefoot, So There Are No Shoes To Fill: Ajai Jhala

The outgoing CEO of BBDO India shares some of his thoughts with Srabana Lahiri as he prepares to bid adieu to his role of 10 years

- Srabana Lahiri

That farewell party invitation from Josy Paul, Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of BBDO India, dated July 6, 2018, pretty much sums up the role of outgoing CEO Ajai Jhala, his partner of nearly a decade who helped forge the agency’s philosophy of ‘Create Acts Not Ads’, earning global acclaim and giving birth to social movements in the process of creating some iconic advertising campaigns for top brands. Think Gillette, Ariel, Whisper, Mirinda, Quaker, Visa, SC Johnsons, All Out, Aviva et al and you get the picture. “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell,” Jhala had once told us, explaining that for him, business meant targeted growth, growing brands and winning new business, all with a sense of purpose.

Here are excerpts from a conversation we had with Ajai Jhala a day before the aforementioned farewell party, in which he talks of his take-aways from a decade at BBDO India, moving to Kent to be with his family and what he is going to miss.

Q] What is the one big story that emerges as you sum up your 10 years at BBDO?

To me, the one big story is how we as outsiders and underdogs carved out a whole new way of creating brilliant and brave work on big brands by challenging cultural convention. One word (action) was chiselled into a mantra (Create Acts, not Ads) so powerful that we mounted a love missile (Social Disobedience) on it to challenge the way things are. The beauty of the story is that it was always embedded in the last two letters of BBDO. To DO is to be.